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selection based upon the breadth of their curriculum vitae, their experience in super-
vising preservice teachers and whether they had received any teaching awards.
Twenty such mentors were recruited. Of the selected mentors, 18 attended a two-
day face-to-face workshop in online mentorship using a variation of the ‘Mentoring
Exceptional Teachers’ course in which participants learnt about the praxis of men-
toring using the five factor model as a framework (Hudson et al., 2015 ). The techni-
cal skills of mentoring were taught to mentors by going through each of the five
factors in turn. Each factor was approached through questions and exercises that
elicited the experiences of the mentors to be and then built upon these to arrive at
advice for mentoring. There was also a mentorship circle in which mentors them-
selves could experience peer and group mentoring – a ‘circle of mentors’. This cir-
cle was supported by two teachers with at least 10 years’ experience as supervising
teachers.
The complex relationships within the TeachConnect ecosystem are shown in
Fig. 8.2 as a network diagram. Many teachers come together in a mentorship circle,
in which there is more than one experienced teacher with mentorship training pres-
ent. Many mentors come together in the circle of mentors in the presence of experi-
enced supervising teachers. One-to-one connections occur organically within this
ecosystem.
The aim of this ecosystem was to support conversations in which a high quality
of praxis was supported. For example, the hope was that preservice teachers in pro-
fessional experience would commence discussions by relating their day-to-day
experiences within their schools. Through dialogue within the mentorship commu-
nity, and at the appropriate level, these discussions would lead to critical reflection
and the linking of theoretical notions to the techne of teaching. Participants in
TeachConnect would be supported in developing their praxis through both the
medium and the messaging, where the medium of the social spaces is inherently
collegial and participatory, relying upon mutually beneficial relationships (Boyd &
Ellison, 2007 ). Alternately the messaging (through the design of the site, e.g. quotes
displayed on each page, and framing of correspondence with participants, e.g.
emails) attempts to emphasise the need to consider the philosophical underpinnings
for teaching practice.
However, the outcomes from this phase of the TeachConnect platform as a
design-based research project suggest that a high quality of praxis was not suffi-
ciently supported by this design. What we observed in the platform is that members
are often unwilling to discuss their teaching practice until others within the group
had normalised this kind of sharing. In many mentorship circles, this never occurred,
and conversations remained stilted or superficial (e.g. focussing on discussion of
resources).
A further phase of the platform is currently being implemented. The two main
areas being explored are the use of existing dialogical communities of teachers that
have relationship in the physical world (to see if the depth of the relationship
changes the possibilities for online mentoring) and the way in which experienced
teachers are trained (explicitly discussing the support for a high level of praxis). A
further consideration is that external policy decisions continually impact upon
N. Kelly et al.